The Source for Video ⊕ New Media

Event

Curatorial Incubator v.11: Screen Test

This year, the Curatorial Incubator v.11 – Stop with the performance already! went in search of works that go over the top while reaching for the stars. Since the very beginning of independent video, artists have been turning the camera on themselves and their friends and, in the process, have redefined performance for the camera as both expressive and excessive. We wanted to see what young curators would turn up when considering this subject. The results are wonderfully diverse—from spaces to faces, each of our three participants has put together challenging programs that both engage and entertain. Combining their own personal knowledge with the extensive holdings at Vtape, the three emerging artist/curators weave older works – some from the earliest days of artists’ video – into very contemporary conversations with younger counterparts. Again The Curatorial Incubator proves to be important programming platform, providing a context for exchange and discourse across generational lines.

We open this year’s Curatorial Incubator with Zach Pearl’s examination of that Hollywood stand-by, the Screen Test. Not surprisingly, he finds that artists have a way of baring it all that both embraces and surpasses the tradition.

“The video performances in this program are not screen tests in this traditional sense. None were shot under the context of an audition or portray a character per se. However, each performance does reveal itself to be a test—a challenge to bridge a carefully constructed reality and awkward moments of intensely human behaviour. By staging intentionally disconcerting acts, each artist positions the viewer as reluctant witness to the completion of a difficult task.” – Zach Pearl